Hearing a ghost: NPR, HIV-AIDS, ABC and God

May 4, 2004 By

uganda_aidsIs it possible to spot a God-beat ghost while listening to the radio? While driving in rush-hour traffic on I-95?

In this case, I think so.

I heard a fine National Public Radio report this morning by Brenda Wilson about an article in the journal Science covering the success of Uganda’s programs to fight HIV-AIDS. To hear the story (if you have the right software), click here.

Everyone agrees that Uganda has been much more successful than similar African nations in cutting the spread of AIDS. But why is this the case?

The news is that Uganda is doing more than offering basic education programs that include the use of condoms. Uganda created its now famous ABC program — which stands for “abstinence,” “be faithful” or use a condom.

And the ghost? The NPR report emphasized that Uganda had taken advantage of the power of “social networks” to spread a message of warning that encouraged young people to abstain from sex and adults to limit the number of their sexual partners. These person-to-person contacts continued through “support clubs” for those who have had HIV-AIDS tests.

I was struck by that rather vague, ghost-like term “social networks.”

Based on other information I have read about this issue, it seems that a high percentage of those “social networks” actually have names. They are called churches and mosques.

You would expect the religious element of this controversy to receive attention in reports by the cultural conservatives who work at the Family Research Council, Crosswalk.com and CatholicEducation.org. But the role of religious institutions was also highlighted in a United Nations report on the Uganda AIDS Control Programme, which included this material from its acting director, Dr. Joshua Musinguzi.

(The) ACP used drama groups, schools, churches, mosques and community-based organizations to help spread the word on AIDS. “Because of our openness about it, the challenge of AIDS became the concern of everybody. Churches, mosques, schools, the army, and even private companies initiated their own programmes to handle the problem,” he said.

So what is the controversy? Part of the problem is that discussions of the Uganda program have become ensnared in American politics, where the battle lines have been drawn between the religious left and the right, between those who preach condoms and those who preach abstinence. The NPR report argues that the reality on the ground in Uganda is more complex than one or the other.

But, clearly, those “support networks” are doing a good job of spreading the word about abstinence.

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Attention journalists: Want reader reactions? (Heed Doug's post)

May 3, 2004 By

This may seem like a strange thing to do, but I want to encourage readers who are working journalists to do something after they have read Doug’s latest post on music tends in the church. Google the following words and then hang on — “worship wars.”

You see, North American churches don’t just fight about sexuality. Many of them — oldline Protestant, Catholic, megachurch evangelical, you name it — are also fighting about music (and other forms of post-Matrix worship media, to a lesser degree). This topic will turn into a theme on this blog for a simple reason — the cultural issues related to music are symbolic and all of this stands for larger doctrinal and liturgical issues in this era.

As the old saying goes: What’s the difference between a terrorist and a liturgist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.

This is news. Of all the topics I write on year after year, the “worship wars” columns generate the most reader response. And there are similar stories in Judaism and other faiths. Check out the “flexidoxy” subplot in David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise. Or note that some of the wildest acts of doctrinal deconstructionism are taking place in some of the most conservative churches. Let me share a hint of this from five years ago:

The worshippers may gather in a candle-lit sanctuary and follow a liturgy of ancient texts and solemn chants, while gazing at Byzantine icons.

The singing, however, will be accompanied by waves of drums and electric guitars and the result often sounds like a cross between Pearl Jam and the Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos. The icons, meanwhile, are digital images downloaded from the World Wide Web and projected on screens.

The people who are experimenting with these kinds of rites aren’t interested in the bouncy Baby Boomer-friendly megachurch praise services that have dominated American Protestantism for a generation. They want to appeal to teens and young adults who consider “contemporary worship” shallow and old-fashioned and out of touch with their darker, more ironic take on life. They are looking for what comes next.

The plasma-screen-ready theology of tomorrow is evolving. But the music wars are the heart of the matter right now. The whole world of mainstream evangelicalism is turning into an FM radio dial packed with consumer niches. Pollster George Barna talked with Protestant pastors, “worship leaders” and other church professionals and discovered that 90 percent of the conflicts reporting in their congregations was rooted in music.

“What we know about Americans is that we view ourselves first and foremost as consumers,” said Barna. “Even when we walk in the doors of our churches what we tend to do is to wonder how can I get a good transaction out of this experience. . . . So, what we know from our research is that Americans have made worship something that primarily that we do for ourselves. When is it successful? When we feel good.”

Welcome to Oprah evangelicalism? It’s snappy, it has a beat, and you can dance to it. With your hands lifted into the air.

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Filed Under: Godbeat, Music

Separating Vatican fact from myth

April 29, 2004 By

johnallenJohn Allen Jr., Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter since 2000, delivered a speech earlier this month that humorously took apart five myths about the institution he covers. Candy Czernicki reported on Allen’s speech for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s Catholic Herald. Here are the five myths, with quotes from Czernicki’s report.

Single-mindedness

“The Congregation of Divine Worship is much more conservative, sober, Romanesque,” Allen said. “The Office of Liturgical Celebration doesn’t buy that at all. Their liturgies are more modern, dynamic, expressive.” He joked that the liturgical office staff “try to set a record for how many liturgical rules they can break in one papal Mass. These things usually have dance numbers that rival ‘Cats.’”

Absolute control

“(People see the pope as) an ecclesiastical lion,” Allen said. “They think the pope is standing behind a computer terminal in the apostolic palace, calling all the shots for the Roman Catholic Church. But there is no person or group who has absolute control inside the Vatican.”

Secrecy

Allen said that while “the Vatican does have secrets, like every place else, (and) it is more insulated than a secular democracy … it’s no better at keeping secrets than anyone else. The problem at the Vatican is not secrecy, but that it’s unique, a culture outside the experience of most observers. The Holy See is a cultural preserve. What looks like secrecy is really singularity.”

Wealth

“(Harvard) could run five Vaticans every year and still have pocket change left over for an endowed chair,” Allen said, equating the Vatican’s patrimony — all the assets it could sell — to that of a medium-sized Catholic university. Its total patrimony is $770 million. The University of Notre Dame’s endowment is four and a half times greater, he said.

Careerism

According to Allen, a senior white-collar worker in the Vatican, equivalent to a senior vice president of an American corporation, makes $18,000 to $20,000 a year. He also noted that “Vatican documents are never signed. You’re supposed to hear the institution speaking, not the person.”

Allen said the five myths appear in “lazy popular journalism,” and he spelled out how they can affect coverage of something as important as the church’s response to sexual abuse by priests:

“Most journalists’ stories are derived from these myths,” Allen said. When the Vatican rejected the first draft of the child protection norms, journalists portrayed the Vatican as trying to squelch autonomy.

“The Vatican got it right, but this was not the dominant public perception,” Allen said. “(Journalists) created the impression of chaos — they were more concerned with authority than anything else. The press got the story wrong (because) they are collectively in the grip of this mythology.” He suggested that “while I am under no illusion that these myths are going to pass anytime soon — they’re too embedded in consciousness,” they could more easily be debunked by people who are “informed, nonpolemical, and rooted in a profound sense of communion.”

“In my view, journalism is a secular enterprise, and there is no specifically Catholic way to do it,” Allen wrote last April in his weekly NCR column. “You try to tell the story as best you can, covering the church the way you would City Hall or the White House. Obviously people’s beliefs about the spiritual depths of the church, the idea that God works through these human instruments, is part of the Catholic story, and we neglect that to our peril.”

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On the Passion pressures in Chicagoland

April 28, 2004 By

trueorfalse“Truth is, I’ve been following this movie very closely for professional and personal reasons. My wife is an Presbyterian minister, a hospital chaplain (and, I might add, among the numbers who will not see this movie, though not for the reasons I write about. I have seen the film and will likely see it again.)

“I believe Jesus speaks very forcefully throughout scripture in defense of those who otherwise would not have a voice. That, Douglas, is quite the opposite of a ‘trend’ story.”

– from comment by Lou Carlozo, reporter at the Chicago Tribune

Hello. It’s time for another episode of Revenge of the Passion Posts.

I have shipped my column to Scripps Howard (prayers on the religious left) and given my last two final exams. So now let me pause to offer my two cents on the unfolding debates in the comments section on the Chicagoland Passion controversy.

First of all, I should note that I had a tiny bit of contact with this story. I was contacted by Chicago Tribune reporter Geneive Abdo, who was looking for national contacts to back up the story that was already on its way to print. It seemed to me that she had a local story or two and was trying to make this a national headline.

I have to admit that I was, personally, a bit put off by the fact that there seemed to be little interest at all in other points of view on the matter, even a diversity of viewpoints that were critical of the movie.

I mention this for one reason: As the comment offered by Prof. John Granger notes, I actually suggested that the Tribune research some people who had made decisions not to see the movie on their own, for theological reasons.

Some felt conflicted about wanting to see it, but then deciding not to — primarily due to concerns about the highly literal images of violence. I am the only member of my family to have seen the film, for example, and do not plan to see it again. (Studying parts of it in classes I teach would be another matter.) I also know what kinds of email one receives after writing a column that is in any way critical of this movie.

Now, I have no doubts that there were some pressures — church to church, perhaps — to get involved in the early screenings. But the whole tone of the Chicago Trib article stuck me, well, rather as it did Doug. Perhaps I felt that way because of my earlier contacts with Abdo.

I don’t know — maybe there was loads of national information, stories and facts that did not make it into the final draft of the story. Maybe there was this Passion pressure wave from coast to coast. But I did not see it in the Trib story and, having made a ton of calls and emails on Passion topics, I have not run into it anywhere else. I told Abdo that, as we played phone and email tag.

Finally, has anyone else in this circle watched the actual Mel Gibson interviews on EWTN? I guess I am with him on this matter. He told the viewers: This is going to be very, very graphic. If you have any concerns about that, do not go. (Or words to that effect.)

Sounds like good advice.

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Filed Under: Film, Godbeat

Silent No More in the New York Times? Maybe, maybe not

April 26, 2004 By

SilentIt is always interesting to see what newpapers do with the counter protestors at abortion-related marches. The rule of thumb at pro-abortion-rights marches is that reporters lock in on the strangest anti-abortion activists they can find. The standard picture is of a row of screaming men in hard hats or, perhaps, a silent line of appropriately dressed priests and pastors.

The key word is “men.”

So I returned to Google this morning to see how many mainstream reporters mentioned the “Silent No More” protestors, an organization for those who have experienced abortion and now — as their signs always say — regret making that choice. (The photo is from an earlier demonstration.) These women are frequently seen at public events, but rarely in news reports. They are not the anti-abortion demonstrators of choice, especially for TV news.

At first glance, it appeared that the main New York Times story included a reference to the “Silent No More” women. However, the version of the story that is currently online no longer includes this edgy material (even though it shows up on Google). If there are readers in the New York City area, did this passage make it into the local dead-tree-pulp edition?

However, there are newspapers out there that did not — for whatever reason — go back and edit out that section of the original New York Times report. Here, for example, is a reference from the Omaha World-Herald:

Several hundred counter demonstrators also gathered along the march route. Deborah Cardamone of Pittsburgh held up a cardboard tombstone bearing the names of women who had died from abortions. Among the victims was her daughter, Marla, who died in 1989 at age 18 after an abortion.

Cardamone, a member of Silent No More, an anti-abortion group of women who have had abortions but are now opposed to the procedure, said her daughter felt as if she had no other choice but to get an abortion.

“I am just here to represent her and all of the other women who didn’t have a choice,” she said. “She was murdered along with my grandson.”

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Did anyone cover the prayers before the pro-abortion-rights march?

April 26, 2004 By

sacramentOne of the most interesting news angles in the coverage leading up to yesterday’s pro-abortion-rights march in Washington, D.C., concerned the Rev. Ignacio Castuera, the United Methodist pastor who is now the official chaplain to Planned Parenthood. In a Q&A interview with the Dallas Morning News, Castuera stated openly what many oldline Protestant leaders say behind the scenes. They believe they can make a spiritual case for the “choice” options in the sexual revolution. Why is that?

In all of creation, we are the sexual and spiritual elite. We’re one of the few creatures for which sex is far more than reproduction. We know that God created other beings with reproductive months or cycles. We practically go from womb to tomb with sexual interest. Only a few primates accompany us on that journey of lifelong sexuality. We should humbly accept that gift, with a word of thanks, and find out what God intended that gift to be.

Searching around with Google, it seems that Castuera didn’t make it into the mainstream news coverage of the march. It was also interesting to note that there few follow-ups on other interesting religion-news angles in the big story of the day. The Chicago Tribune advance story, for example, had featured an eye-opener of a lead by “special contributor” Gail Schmoller Philbin. It noted that, “Sister Donna Quinn, a Palos Hills resident, attended the last two and is flying to this one with four other nuns.”

This would appear to explain the quiet presence of a “Nuns for Choice” sign in a single story in the Hartford Courant, but there were no additional details. Personally, if I was covering a pro-abortion-rights march and saw a sign that said “Nuns for Choice,” that would raise a few questions that I would want to chase. Sister Quinn and the Nuns for Choice also make a brief walk-on appearance in coverage at the Ms. Magazine blog, but we learn nothing about them.

By the way, in another God-beat related story, Sen. John “JFK” Kerry did not push the Communion envelope by marching, although journalists noticed that several members of his family did so. In addition to its steady drumbeat of anti-President Bush references, almost all coverage of the march clearly served as a major forum for Kerry campaign organizers.

The Chicago Tribune story made it clear that there were religious events linked to the march, from the Catholics for a Free Choice protest at the Vatican Embassy to a “Prayerfully Pro-Choice Interfaith Worship Service” at the U.S. Capitol Reflecting Pool featuring leaders from a number of progressive folks — Episcopal, Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, United Methodist, United Church of Christ and others. What did they have to say?

In the Chicago Tribune article, one conservative United Methodist leader noted that the media often ignore these events, perhaps to offer a “sanitized” account that overlooks the “radical element” in these religious coalitions that sees “abortion as a good.” This may have been a reference to the ex-Catholic priest Daniel Maguire, author of “Sacred Choices: The Right to Contraception and Abortion in Ten World Religions.”

Maguire is on a three-year leave of absence from teaching ethics at Marquette University in Milwaukee to combat what he sees as misinformation about how world religions view abortion and contraception. Through the Sacred Choices Initiative, a campaign of a group of international scholars called the Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health and Ethics, he hopes to spread the word that all major religions have elements that have supported a woman’s right to choose.

“There’s a big lie out there — that religions are all anti-choice,” Maguire said.

Was Maguire at march? Did he speak at the interfaith service? I, for one, would like to know what he had to say. The same goes for Sister Donna Quinn and her nuns.

UPDATE: A friend out in the blogosphere let me know that veteran God-beat reporter Adelle Banks of Religion News Service did cover the interfaith prayer service held before the march. There is no direct URL for the story at the RNS site and I have not located a copy on a newspaper site anywhere. A sample from this coverage:

“I believe God stands with women as they end pregnancies, just as God stands with women who deliver babies and with women who give their babies to adoptive parents,” declared the Rev. Mark Pawlowski, a member of the Clergy Advisory Board of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, reading from a “pro-choice credo” at the service.

“God does not choose God’s allegiances. God stands with all of us, regardless of where we stand.”

He was joined by clergy and lay people of Jewish, Unitarian, Buddhist and Sikh traditions and the crowd sang “Dona Nobis Pacem” in Latin, English and Hebrew.

UPDATE II: The Catholic blogosphere is stirring on the Nuns for Choice angle. There must be a link there with group known as Chicago Women Church. That site contains few if any names, however. Sample language from the mission statement:

We are a sacred circle of loving and powerful women who create and celebrate ritual. We honor and encourage the Spirit in one another to expand and ignite. We reverence diversity and equality….

We affirm our oneness with the earth as we search for the Transcendent in ourselves and in the universe.

Meanwhile, Sister Donna Quinn is a Sinsinawa Dominican who is a leader in the National Coalition of American Nuns and the co-founder of Women-Church Convergence. To hear her speak for herself, at Harvard no less, click here.

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Can the “Holocaust” turn into the “Shoah”?

April 21, 2004 By

textWhat does the word “holocaust” mean? And does the meaning change when that first letter is capitalized and it becomes “Holocaust”?

The answer, of course, is “yes.” With a large “H,” we are not talking about really large fires that cause a lot of destruction. We’re talking about The Holocaust, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Commission on the Holocaust, the Holocaust television miniseries and untold education programs, documentaries and liturgies of remembrance.

Which brings us to a solid feature story last weekend in the Palm Beach Post by reporter Charles Passy (who is not the religion-beat specialist), which details the efforts of some Jewish and non-Jewish clergy and scholars to begin using the Hebrew word “Shoah” — which means “destruction” — as the official term to describe the Nazi genocide of the World War II era.

After all, notes Passy, Steven Spielberg chose it as the name for the foundation he has created to tell the story of the survivors. The Vatican named a major report on the subject, “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah.”

But there are many other layers to this complex story. After decades of urging the public to “never forget” the Holocaust, how do religious leaders and educators switch the very name of the event? In some cases, the word is on the cornerstones of buildings and in the titles of legal documents. But there are serious problems with this familiar name, notes Passy.

The knock against “Holocaust” is twofold. Many object to the word, derived from ancient Greek, because it translates as “burnt offering” — in the sacrificial religious sense, according to select scholars. And that leads to a horrific connotation when speaking of the atrocities committed against the Jews, who were often driven to the gas chambers, then cremated. How could their fiery end be considered a sacrifice?

“If it’s a burnt offering to God, then I don’t want to know the God at the other end,” says Michael Berenbaum, a leading scholar based at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

And what about that ordinary word — “holocaust”? Can it be used by those who oppose abortion? Or who want to debate handguns? Or protest the deaths of Palestinian civilians? The list goes on and on. Again, Passy notes:

As “Holocaust” seeps into the vernacular, the term has become attached not only to other genocides and mass slaughters — in Armenia, Cambodia and elsewhere — but also to a range of other events and movements. In an article for a Jewish publication, Diana Cole cited such examples as a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ “Holocaust on Your Plate” exhibit and SiliconeHolocaust.org, a Web site for “breast implant victims.”

Perhaps it would be better to substitute a Hebrew word, thus creating as strong a linguistic link as possible between the historic event and the Jewish people.

But is that practical? Is it too late? What would happen if this issue was raised with, let’s say, the committee that handles revisions in the Associated Press Stylebook? What if reporters started making the substitution on their own?

It’s a cliche, but in this case it’s true: Stay tuned. This is a story worth watching.

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Air America: Burning churches in the village of Middle America

April 20, 2004 By

RandiRhodesShow10bVeteran media critic David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times forced himself to listen to a full cycle of Air America the other day and he decided that the big news is how the liberal talk-radio franchise handles — religion. Well, that and sex. You may have noticed, however, that issues of sexual morality often play a major role in religion news reports these days.

Shaw said that he expected “my fellow liberals” to offer up huge doses of “paranoia and conspiratorial idiocy to match the conservative paranoia and conspiratorial idiocy that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and their ilk have used to turn talk radio into a powerful forum that liberals now blame for every social and political malady this side of tooth decay.”

But what caught Shaw off guard was that Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, Randi Rhodes (shown with Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla.) and the other Air America stars seem so anxious to run away all listeners who do not already agree with them. It also didn’t help, he said, that the shows provided few laughs — other than predictable sex jokes that would appeal to people who hate every person who works in the current White House. Shaw notes:

… Conservatives turned talk radio into their medium in large measure because many people who considered themselves conservatives felt that their interests and their values were either ignored or denigrated by a liberal mainstream media. One recent poll showed that only 19% of the American public now identify themselves as liberal. That means that if a liberal network wants to be successful, politically or economically, it must also convert a significant number of the 39% of the public that the poll said considers itself moderate.

And this brings us, of course, to the same issue that is haunting the modern Democratic Party — the pew gap. Shaw notes that it makes little sense to crudely bash away at the religious beliefs of middle America, if the goal is to win those same people’s hearts away from the clutches of evil conservatives. Yet the Air America hosts seemed determined to trash traditional religious believers whenever possible, even on Good Friday — the most solemn day on the Christian calendar.
text

Two of the hosts gratuitously announced that they’re Jewish, and one — Marc Maron [right] of the network’s “Morning Sedition” program — went on to make fun of Easter and Christmas rituals. Then, in a segment he called “morning devotional,” Maron began his prayer for divine guidance on behalf of President Bush by saying, “Dear Lord, what the hell is going on up there?”

Another host — I think it was Rachel Maddow on “Unfiltered,” though I couldn’t always distinguish her voice from that of co-host Lizz Winstead — called Easter “an odd celebration” and said that a taxi driver had told her that “someone in a Jesus suit” would carry a cross along 42nd Street in New York in a reenactment of the events of Good Friday, “but in this case, he’ll stop to buy a fake Louis Vuitton bag.”

Huh?

There’s a lot more in the Shaw report. Clearly, Air America has decided that the very core of modern liberalism is its opposition to traditional forms of religious belief and its defense of the Sexual Revolution.

Strangely enough, this is precisely what one can hear by turning on someone like, well, James Dobson.

UPDATE: Doug notes the following Time story on the same topic. Once again, religion is in the thick of the paranoid public square. Richard Corliss reports:

At times, the talk can get rawer. Maron speculated that Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance and allowed them to occur to rally the country behind him. Maron also came close to equating born-again Christianity with fascism. When a caller urged him to show a little sensitivity, Maron replied, “Maybe I should be more sympathetic to people with organized delusions.”

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